Having now caught just about every mode of public transport offered in china, we can safely say that the bus is the least comfortable. The crazy driving and bumpy roads, crappy Chinese pop music videos and continuous stops at disgusting public toilets make the trip less than enjoyable, and they seem to be more expensive than the trains?!?

After six hours of this we were dropped off in an unknown, quiet, dark and dirty part of the city, so our first impressions of Wuhan were very ordinary. Despite the bad start, we found the hostel quite easily and awoke the next morning, which happened to be valentines day, to find a vibrant city full of happy youth.

It was the first place where we weren't bowled over by stressed out locals rushing past, and we found ourselves actually overtaking some love-dazed couples.
The city of Wuhan was built around the Yangzi, so we decided to catch a ferry across to the other side (because we clearly had not had enough of boats yet!) and found Wuhan's 'beach'. It proved impossible to forget that it was Valentines Day.
People were popping out of every corner trying to sell us roses, and we've never seen so many couples making out! The sky was full of brightly coloured kites, one of which was as big as a bus! Unable to avoid the temptation, we decided to follow suit and purchase our very own. However, we learnt that sometimes the cheaper option isn't the best one as we were unable to launch our hot pink flying sheep more than a few metres into the air. We're pretty sure that the guy with the kite as big as a bus was trying to tell us that the sheep's tail was too small. At least we were able to entertain the locals at our own expense.. and had a good laugh about it ourselves later on.

We are now aboard a train and are heading towards Hangzhou. Emilina (one half of the French couple that we met on the Yangzi cruise) is studying chinese at the University there and invited us to stay. We bought standing tickets for the 9 hour trip. It seems, though, that they sell an infinite amount of standing tickets and our aspirations of sitting down on our bags were crushed by the ridiculous amount of people herded into the carriage! Fortunately Jess's attractive pink jacket had us plucked out and upgraded to a restaurant seat in the next carriage, where we got two good meals, unlimited sunflower seeds, tea and a comfy seat for the whole trip for a mere 60 yuan each!